Surgeons are preparing to create the first husband and wife cyborgs: they intend to implant computer chips in a British professor and his wife to see if they can communicate sensation and movement by thought alone, according to a published report yesterday.
The professor hopes it will show how two brains can interact, said the report in The Sunday Times. Doctors at Stoke Mandeville hospital, who will perform the surgery, were quoted as saying they hope it will lead to new treatments for paralysis victims.
Long the realm of science-fiction, a cybernetic organism or cyborg is a human being whose body has been "enhanced" by technical means.
In the experiment, Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Reading University, and his wife Irena will have silicon chips about 5cm long implanted in their arms just above the elbow. Each chip will also have a power source, a tuner and a radio transceiver.
They will be surgically connected to nerve fibres in the couple's arms.
The signals from Warwick will be converted to radio waves and transmitted to a computer which will re-transmit them to the chip in Irena. Warwick believes that when he moves his own fingers, his brain will also be able to move Irena's.
They may even be able to communicate anger and excitement, because emotions also stimulate nerve activity. "It is like putting a plug into the nervous system," Warwick told The Sunday Times.
"If I move my left index finger by sending signals to move the muscles, those signals will also be transmitted to Irena's nervous system. We know the signal is transmissible. The question is whether it will be recognized in the same way by Irena."
The signal could reach Irena's brain as well as her fingers. Not surprisingly she is wary, "I have mixed feelings because I'm worried about the operation, being under an anaesthetic," she said. "On the other hand, it is exciting."
Apart from the novelty and excitement, she does not want her husband to be "linked up to another woman".
Ali Jamous, the surgeon who will lead the operation on the couple, was quoted on the paper's Web site as saying the technology may one day help people who are paralyzed by spinal cord damage.
"The nerves in the leg below the lesion are still working but cannot make contact with the brain," he said. "If we could transmit that signal from one side of the lesion to the other, you could bypass the break."
With Warwick he aims to connect both motor and sensory nerves to the chip in the hope that signals from one or both will prove transmissible, the Web site said.
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